September 14, 2025 • 11 mins
In Honor of Two Major Anniversaries
In 2025, Operation Bootstrap Africa (OBA)—a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization that
partners with Africans to strengthen their futures through education, healthcare, agriculture, and
other long-term development projects—marks its sixtieth anniversary. Also in 2025, the Maasai
Girls Secondary School in northern Tanzania—one of OBA’s flagship projects—celebrates thirty
years of educating and empowering girls. Coinciding with these milestones, author Juliet Cutler
releases Lessons in Hope: A New Era for Maasai Women in Tanzania, a moving new book that tells
the stories of Maasai women whose lives have been transformed by education.
Told through the perspectives of the women themselves—graduates of the Maasai Girls
Secondary School—Lessons in Hope is a powerful testament to what happens when girls are
given the opportunity to learn. Their journeys span fields as diverse as healthcare, government,
education, business, and nonprofit leadership, and together they reveal a collective impact that is
reshaping communities across northern Tanzania.
“Imagine a girl from this remote village going to school,” says Neema Melami
Laitayock, a 2004 graduate. “The Maasai Girls Secondary School changed
my life, and my family’s life too. That school is giving girls an opportunity to
understand themselves, to gain confidence, and to have careers.”
Lessons in Hope shines a light on the resilience of young women facing systemic barriers like early,
forced marriages, gender-based violence, and poverty—and on their determination to lead, give
back, and uplift others. It’s both a celebration and a call to action.
A Legacy of Empowerment
Founded in 1965, OBA has championed education across East Africa for six decades. Its
partnership with the Maasai Girls Secondary School has helped thousands of Maasai girlsOPERATION BOOTSTRAP AFRICA
612-871-4980 | www.bootstrapafrica.org
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
In 2025, Operation Bootstrap Africa (OBA)—a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization that
partners with Africans to strengthen their futures through education, healthcare, agriculture, and
other long-term development projects—marks its sixtieth anniversary. Also in 2025, the Maasai
Girls Secondary School in northern Tanzania—one of OBA’s flagship projects—celebrates thirty
years of educating and empowering girls. Coinciding with these milestones, author Juliet Cutler
releases Lessons in Hope: A New Era for Maasai Women in Tanzania, a moving new book that tells
the stories of Maasai women whose lives have been transformed by education.
Told through the perspectives of the women themselves—graduates of the Maasai Girls
Secondary School—Lessons in Hope is a powerful testament to what happens when girls are
given the opportunity to learn. Their journeys span fields as diverse as healthcare, government,
education, business, and nonprofit leadership, and together they reveal a collective impact that is
reshaping communities across northern Tanzania.
“Imagine a girl from this remote village going to school,” says Neema Melami
Laitayock, a 2004 graduate. “The Maasai Girls Secondary School changed
my life, and my family’s life too. That school is giving girls an opportunity to
understand themselves, to gain confidence, and to have careers.”
Lessons in Hope shines a light on the resilience of young women facing systemic barriers like early,
forced marriages, gender-based violence, and poverty—and on their determination to lead, give
back, and uplift others. It’s both a celebration and a call to action.
A Legacy of Empowerment
Founded in 1965, OBA has championed education across East Africa for six decades. Its
partnership with the Maasai Girls Secondary School has helped thousands of Maasai girlsOPERATION BOOTSTRAP AFRICA
612-871-4980 | www.bootstrapafrica.org
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How are you doing today.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Juliette, I'm well, good morning, Arrow.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Listen to that voice. My goodness sakes.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know, when it's really important things, things seem to fail.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But I I thought that was all part of the
craftsmen craftsmanship of life is that that when you go
into a project, you you can't say it's all going
to become a victory. You've got to you've got to
have room enough to make that change because it is
going to go a different direction.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's you're you're definitely right on that. I was just
going to ask how you're doing today and if you
could tell me a little bit about the format for
today's interview.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, first of all, I don't interview, and the reason
why is because everybody can interview. What we have is
we have a conversation. And that's what makes everything so different.
And it's it's almost like with with lessons in Hope.
You in order you to get to hope, you've got
to be able to ask the right questions and then
question the answers and so but you do so in conversational.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Form, right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And to me, that's when a listener who just happens
to be passing by goes, Oh my god, that I
was just thinking about that. This mon.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Great, Well, that sounds perfect when it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Comes to Lessons in Hope, there is a love story here.
I mean, it's one of those things that reminds me
so much of what we were taught in martial arts
learn to love all living things.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think when I
first went to Tanzania in nineteen ninety nine as a
twenty something young teacher to teach at this school for
Masai girls, I didn't really realize the sort of lifelong
love story that would come from that, That I would
(01:38):
become quite attached to these young women and to the
challenges that they face, and would feel called and compelled
to do what I could to help. And that's now
been a twenty five year journey, and so yes, I
think Lessons in Hope is absolutely a love story in
(01:59):
many way. It uplifts women's voices, yes, and articulates lets
them articulate really the power of education on their own
lives and the ways in which it's impacted their families
and communities as well.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Have you ever taken a journey into the way of saying,
how did I get to Tanzania in the way of
because I mean, it's so easy to say, Okay, well
we did this and then when we got there, we
did this. But I believe in the story, before the story,
something led you there. What were the building blocks that
created that path for you to say, I've got the confidence,
(02:39):
I'm going to gain the courage.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, when I was in university, I first heard about
this school. And this school actually celebrates its thirty year
anniversary this year, so I heard about it just as
it was being constructed. And it happened to be that
I was working as a backpack guide in Montana, which
is where I grew up, the summer before I went
to complete my university degree and do my student teaching,
(03:07):
and there was a gentleman who brought a group of
high schoolers out from Minnesota and he served on the
board of an organization called Operation Bootstrap Africa, and that
nonprofit organization was building the school. It was partnered with
local people to build the school and for the last
thirty years has provided scholarships for all the students at
that school. And I think this gentleman, his name was Marey,
(03:31):
saw that I could like lead a backpack group cook
over an open fire in a Roughe it that I
was made of tough stuff in some ways, even though
as a young woman I didn't always feel that way.
I think he saw that and he started telling me
the stories of the young women that this school would serve.
And these were women who grew up in the Masai community.
(03:53):
So the Masai are pastoralists. They heard cattle and goats
seasonally across the Great Rift Valley in north in Tanzania
and southern Kenya, most women don't have an opportunity to
go to school, and many are forced into marriage at puberty.
Some still suffer female genital mutilation, even though that is
illegal in Tanzania. So this school was something quite rare.
(04:17):
These girls really had no pathway out of poverty, and
the school aimed to change that. And I think I
was really inspired by those stories. And I'd always wanted
to be an international student and that just hadn't really
worked out, and I thought, well, what if I were
an international teacher? And so that was the spark that
(04:38):
sent me on this journey.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Please Do not Move. There's more with Juliet Cutler coming
up next. The name of her book, Lessons in Hope
We're back with Juliet Cutler. I'm so inspired by stories
like this and they will grow forward with me. The
reason why is because one of my essential jobs and
the only reason why I took it was because of
the lockdown, and I craved being with people, so I
went to a grocery store and in that process I
(05:01):
learned to work with all different age groups. And one
of them that's inspired me are the young adults that
are saying, I want to go do something for the
world first, and then I come back to do my education,
and I'm seeing a lot of students doing that. They're
going to Central America, they're going overseas, they're doing all
these different things to learn things just like what you did,
so that they know the impact will bring something positive
(05:23):
to another generation and another country.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yes, I think we all crave and I think that
this book taps into that. We all crave hope, right.
We all want to have an impact. We all want
to help those we see around us who may have need,
and so I think that was part of the inspiration
for me to go to Tanzania. And I think one
(05:47):
of the really wonderful things that comes through in the
stories of these women many of whom are now in
their thirties. Is that they have that same spark. I
think what came through again and again and talking with
them is their sense of responsibility that because they had
(06:08):
been given this opportunity, they had a responsibility to give
back to the next generation, and not just of their children,
so not just people they know, but more broadly, these
women have founded schools, they're working as doctors, pediatricians, they
founded nonprofits and so they're definitely working to uplift their
(06:33):
community as a result of the education that they received.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
This is such a book in the way that it's
it's like the one thing that I want to be
reading when summer is over and I'm going into a
brand new season, because it really does open up your
heart and believing in mankind as well as compassion, and
a lot of people don't understand compassion or empathy, and
this book says, hey, look, they went from a classroom
to community leadership. Why can't we do that on our
(07:02):
own soil? But wait, we can, because if they did
it there, we can be just like Juliet.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right. So these stories, they may be rooted in Tanzania,
but the themes in the book are universal themes of
resilience and hope and the power of education. So I
hope readers come away with a sense of connection and
possibility and that they find ways to support education, particularly
of women and girls, whether that be locally or globally.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So, how is it do you feel when you know
that you are surrounded by a team of very supportive people,
Because I mean finding a great team, that's a needle
in a haystack. And I would sit there and be
so grateful every second that anybody moved it said thank
you so much for doing that. Oh my god, without you,
we could not have done this. I mean, it's just
I'm so in love with the idea that you have
(07:52):
a team that works as one.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah. So it was very important to me to involve
Tansa Nians at every phase of this project. And when
I was first I was asked to write this book
by Operation Bootstrap Africa, who I mentioned earlier. They're the
organization that has supported the school and they're actually celebrating
their sixty year anniversary this year, so it's a big year,
a thirty year for the school and a sixty year
(08:18):
for them. But they came to me and they said,
you know, we really want to document some of these stories.
We know some of them, we know they're very powerful stories,
and we want to share them. And that was kind
of the kernel of the idea, and I thought, I don't,
you know, like, is this documentary? What exactly is this?
But I think as a writer sort of I naturally
(08:40):
moved and gravitated towards a book as part of this.
But when I went to Tanzania for the first trip,
I had something like twenty interviews set up and I
didn't really know what form this project was going to take.
But one of the things that was really important to
me was to involve graduates from the beginning. So there
was a small committee of graduates who identified the women
(09:01):
I actually interviewed, and then I worked with a team
of Tanzanians, one of which was Subat Lukumi, and she's
a Massai woman and she was able to help me
coordinate all these interviews, and that's no small task in
rural Tanzania, where you're sort of going across the bush
to find places, and she got these interviews all set
(09:24):
up for me and helped me to identify two local
photographers who traveled with us and recorded all these interviews,
but also took the beautiful portraits of the women that
you see in this book. And so from the very beginning,
from sort of the exception of the idea with Operation
Bootstrap Africa, to working very closely with Korwitz and other
(09:45):
Tanzanians on the project, and then as the interviews were written,
I shared those back with each graduate so that she
would have an opportunity to add details I might have
missed when I talked with her, or correct things that
I might have gotten wrong. So they were integral and
making sure that their voices came through in each of
(10:07):
these profiles in a way that reflected their ideas and
their stories.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I call that a dear future Reader moment. In other words,
you've taken the past, you've written for the present. But
the people that will truly discover this are those that
are in the future. Dear future reader, and I.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Think many of them in the stories that they tell,
have an eye for that future, whether it be a
future reader or whether it be a future student at
the school. But I think, you know, I had some
nervousness going into the project. I thought, well, you know,
sometimes when you interview someone, you kind of just get
the surface you don't really get under the surface, or
(10:50):
sometimes what people say and what they mean are different.
And what I really wanted to get at was the
heart of the story for these women. And I was
a little nervous that they would be sort of reserved
or unwilling to share those stories. And what I found
was that was not at all true. Over and again,
these women really opened up their lives and their stories
(11:11):
to the interview team. To me, there was a real
willingness to do that, and I think that was because
of this dear future reader. They really saw these stories
as not only a way to inspire future generations of
Moss Sided girls, but also a way to express gratitude
to the sponsors and donors who have made this school possible.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Wow, you have got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. I love where your heart is
and where you are growing.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Oh thanks, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay, I will thank you.
How are you doing today.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Juliette, I'm well, good morning, Arrow.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Listen to that voice. My goodness sakes.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know, when it's really important things, things seem to fail.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But I I thought that was all part of the
craftsmen craftsmanship of life is that that when you go
into a project, you you can't say it's all going
to become a victory. You've got to you've got to
have room enough to make that change because it is
going to go a different direction.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's you're you're definitely right on that. I was just
going to ask how you're doing today and if you
could tell me a little bit about the format for
today's interview.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, first of all, I don't interview, and the reason
why is because everybody can interview. What we have is
we have a conversation. And that's what makes everything so different.
And it's it's almost like with with lessons in Hope.
You in order you to get to hope, you've got
to be able to ask the right questions and then
question the answers and so but you do so in conversational.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Form, right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And to me, that's when a listener who just happens
to be passing by goes, Oh my god, that I
was just thinking about that. This mon.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Great, Well, that sounds perfect when it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Comes to Lessons in Hope, there is a love story here.
I mean, it's one of those things that reminds me
so much of what we were taught in martial arts
learn to love all living things.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think when I
first went to Tanzania in nineteen ninety nine as a
twenty something young teacher to teach at this school for
Masai girls, I didn't really realize the sort of lifelong
love story that would come from that, That I would
(01:38):
become quite attached to these young women and to the
challenges that they face, and would feel called and compelled
to do what I could to help. And that's now
been a twenty five year journey, and so yes, I
think Lessons in Hope is absolutely a love story in
(01:59):
many way. It uplifts women's voices, yes, and articulates lets
them articulate really the power of education on their own
lives and the ways in which it's impacted their families
and communities as well.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Have you ever taken a journey into the way of saying,
how did I get to Tanzania in the way of
because I mean, it's so easy to say, Okay, well
we did this and then when we got there, we
did this. But I believe in the story, before the story,
something led you there. What were the building blocks that
created that path for you to say, I've got the confidence,
(02:39):
I'm going to gain the courage.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, when I was in university, I first heard about
this school. And this school actually celebrates its thirty year
anniversary this year, so I heard about it just as
it was being constructed. And it happened to be that
I was working as a backpack guide in Montana, which
is where I grew up, the summer before I went
to complete my university degree and do my student teaching,
(03:07):
and there was a gentleman who brought a group of
high schoolers out from Minnesota and he served on the
board of an organization called Operation Bootstrap Africa, and that
nonprofit organization was building the school. It was partnered with
local people to build the school and for the last
thirty years has provided scholarships for all the students at
that school. And I think this gentleman, his name was Marey,
(03:31):
saw that I could like lead a backpack group cook
over an open fire in a Roughe it that I
was made of tough stuff in some ways, even though
as a young woman I didn't always feel that way.
I think he saw that and he started telling me
the stories of the young women that this school would serve.
And these were women who grew up in the Masai community.
(03:53):
So the Masai are pastoralists. They heard cattle and goats
seasonally across the Great Rift Valley in north in Tanzania
and southern Kenya, most women don't have an opportunity to
go to school, and many are forced into marriage at puberty.
Some still suffer female genital mutilation, even though that is
illegal in Tanzania. So this school was something quite rare.
(04:17):
These girls really had no pathway out of poverty, and
the school aimed to change that. And I think I
was really inspired by those stories. And I'd always wanted
to be an international student and that just hadn't really
worked out, and I thought, well, what if I were
an international teacher? And so that was the spark that
(04:38):
sent me on this journey.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Please Do not Move. There's more with Juliet Cutler coming
up next. The name of her book, Lessons in Hope
We're back with Juliet Cutler. I'm so inspired by stories
like this and they will grow forward with me. The
reason why is because one of my essential jobs and
the only reason why I took it was because of
the lockdown, and I craved being with people, so I
went to a grocery store and in that process I
(05:01):
learned to work with all different age groups. And one
of them that's inspired me are the young adults that
are saying, I want to go do something for the
world first, and then I come back to do my education,
and I'm seeing a lot of students doing that. They're
going to Central America, they're going overseas, they're doing all
these different things to learn things just like what you did,
so that they know the impact will bring something positive
(05:23):
to another generation and another country.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yes, I think we all crave and I think that
this book taps into that. We all crave hope, right.
We all want to have an impact. We all want
to help those we see around us who may have need,
and so I think that was part of the inspiration
for me to go to Tanzania. And I think one
(05:47):
of the really wonderful things that comes through in the
stories of these women many of whom are now in
their thirties. Is that they have that same spark. I
think what came through again and again and talking with
them is their sense of responsibility that because they had
(06:08):
been given this opportunity, they had a responsibility to give
back to the next generation, and not just of their children,
so not just people they know, but more broadly, these
women have founded schools, they're working as doctors, pediatricians, they
founded nonprofits and so they're definitely working to uplift their
(06:33):
community as a result of the education that they received.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
This is such a book in the way that it's
it's like the one thing that I want to be
reading when summer is over and I'm going into a
brand new season, because it really does open up your
heart and believing in mankind as well as compassion, and
a lot of people don't understand compassion or empathy, and
this book says, hey, look, they went from a classroom
to community leadership. Why can't we do that on our
(07:02):
own soil? But wait, we can, because if they did
it there, we can be just like Juliet.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right. So these stories, they may be rooted in Tanzania,
but the themes in the book are universal themes of
resilience and hope and the power of education. So I
hope readers come away with a sense of connection and
possibility and that they find ways to support education, particularly
of women and girls, whether that be locally or globally.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So, how is it do you feel when you know
that you are surrounded by a team of very supportive people,
Because I mean finding a great team, that's a needle
in a haystack. And I would sit there and be
so grateful every second that anybody moved it said thank
you so much for doing that. Oh my god, without you,
we could not have done this. I mean, it's just
I'm so in love with the idea that you have
(07:52):
a team that works as one.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah. So it was very important to me to involve
Tansa Nians at every phase of this project. And when
I was first I was asked to write this book
by Operation Bootstrap Africa, who I mentioned earlier. They're the
organization that has supported the school and they're actually celebrating
their sixty year anniversary this year, so it's a big year,
a thirty year for the school and a sixty year
(08:18):
for them. But they came to me and they said,
you know, we really want to document some of these stories.
We know some of them, we know they're very powerful stories,
and we want to share them. And that was kind
of the kernel of the idea, and I thought, I don't,
you know, like, is this documentary? What exactly is this?
But I think as a writer sort of I naturally
(08:40):
moved and gravitated towards a book as part of this.
But when I went to Tanzania for the first trip,
I had something like twenty interviews set up and I
didn't really know what form this project was going to take.
But one of the things that was really important to
me was to involve graduates from the beginning. So there
was a small committee of graduates who identified the women
(09:01):
I actually interviewed, and then I worked with a team
of Tanzanians, one of which was Subat Lukumi, and she's
a Massai woman and she was able to help me
coordinate all these interviews, and that's no small task in
rural Tanzania, where you're sort of going across the bush
to find places, and she got these interviews all set
(09:24):
up for me and helped me to identify two local
photographers who traveled with us and recorded all these interviews,
but also took the beautiful portraits of the women that
you see in this book. And so from the very beginning,
from sort of the exception of the idea with Operation
Bootstrap Africa, to working very closely with Korwitz and other
(09:45):
Tanzanians on the project, and then as the interviews were written,
I shared those back with each graduate so that she
would have an opportunity to add details I might have
missed when I talked with her, or correct things that
I might have gotten wrong. So they were integral and
making sure that their voices came through in each of
(10:07):
these profiles in a way that reflected their ideas and
their stories.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I call that a dear future Reader moment. In other words,
you've taken the past, you've written for the present. But
the people that will truly discover this are those that
are in the future. Dear future reader, and I.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Think many of them in the stories that they tell,
have an eye for that future, whether it be a
future reader or whether it be a future student at
the school. But I think, you know, I had some
nervousness going into the project. I thought, well, you know,
sometimes when you interview someone, you kind of just get
the surface you don't really get under the surface, or
(10:50):
sometimes what people say and what they mean are different.
And what I really wanted to get at was the
heart of the story for these women. And I was
a little nervous that they would be sort of reserved
or unwilling to share those stories. And what I found
was that was not at all true. Over and again,
these women really opened up their lives and their stories
(11:11):
to the interview team. To me, there was a real
willingness to do that, and I think that was because
of this dear future reader. They really saw these stories
as not only a way to inspire future generations of
Moss Sided girls, but also a way to express gratitude
to the sponsors and donors who have made this school possible.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Wow, you have got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. I love where your heart is
and where you are growing.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Oh thanks, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay, I will thank you.
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